Engineering

[-JKP-]

Diane wrote: "Perhaps to see how dependent you are on words, try acting out making a picture yourself ...  - say a dog running across some grass - and so without thinking of the word for anything in the picture, any of your equipment, pigments, their colours and so on."

I see things as pictures, like a movie running in my head. When I want to draw it, I freeze-frame the movie and draw what I see in my head. Words don't enter in to it. Also I never look at the words on the paint tubes or colored pencils or any of the art supplies, not even when I buy them. I look at the sample colors on tubes, so words aren't part of the process when I select them or use them. In fact, I went most of my life not knowing the words for many colors (I just learned them recently and I had to make an effort to do it).

If I picture a dog running across some grass, I see grass, I see a dozen different scenes where there might be grass (simultaneously), I see twenty different kinds of dogs, but I see their shapes and colors and postures. The names or breeds or the fact that that brown galloping thing I see in my head is called "dog" does not come into my head unless someone specifically elbows me and asks and jolts me out of my frame of mind.